


I Knew It Well

by NovelistAngel23



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, Childhood Friends, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:21:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22745458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NovelistAngel23/pseuds/NovelistAngel23
Summary: In the first, freezing months of Imperial year 1174, Ashe Ubert meets a violet in human form.
Relationships: Yuri/Ashe Ubert
Comments: 19
Kudos: 297





	I Knew It Well

Ashe met Yuri two months after he was adopted, which he recalls because it was the first and only time he tried to run away.

It was the perfect opportunity to finally do it. He’d been biding his time, but that day Lord Lonato was entertaining a guest from Rowe, too busy to notice Ashe slip away. It was still cold, the sky pure white with snow. Winter had not quite passed yet, because winter even in the farthest Southern reaches of Faerghus lasted lifetimes. That didn’t scare him though. Ashe had been born in the cold. And now he was alone, he would have no fear that his siblings were suffering alongside him.

He snuck out the same way he’d snuck in--across the field. Even in the cold, the field still thrived, a neverending blanket of violets that covered the grounds. As far as the eye could see, so very many violets. Ashe picked his way through them, afraid to crush any, afraid to leave any more of a mess on Lord Lonato’s blessed doorstep.

He made it halfway through the field--glancing over his shoulder, afraid he would be followed and convinced to stay--when he stumbled across a violet in human form.

The violet lay amongst his brethren, eyes shut, deep purple lashes fanned out across his pale cheeks. At first, Ashe thought he was snow, and then he thought he was dead. He yelped and stumbled away, covering his face with both hands. He didn’t want to see dead bodies anymore, he’d seen enough--but then he heard a voice.

“Hey, what are you screaming about?”

Ashe lowered his hands slowly, half afraid it was a ghost, surely a ghost, that awaited him--but it was the violet boy, sitting up. He tilted his head at Ashe, studying him, his eyes piercing. Ashe felt like a butterfly pinned to a board.

Sometimes, Ashe had a feeling about people. He met them and thought not with his head but with his soul, _I will know you for a long, long time._ He’d felt it with Lonato, with Christophe, and it was partly why he’d decided he needed to run away, now, before he became stuck in their honey like a fly.

But when the violet spoke, his voice was the honey, and Ashe was trapped. “Hello?” he asked again, raising one slender brow at him.

Ashe blinked at him, eyes wide with shock. “I… I thought you were dead,” was all he managed to say.

The boy smiled in a way that made Ashe’s heart thrum. Very thin and thoughtful, eyes narrowed as if the snow had gotten into them and they stung. “Not dead,” he assured, and then held his hand out for Ashe to shake. “I’m Yuri.”

Ashe suddenly forgot that he was supposed to be running away. Everything melted away so easily. He took Yuri’s hand and sat beside him in the flowers, and as the sun rose towards the center of the sky, its warmth thawed the frozen ground and loosened Ashe’s tongue. They spoke. For hours, it seemed.

As the sky turned blue above them, Ashe wrung his hands and asked, “Why were you laying in the flowers?”

Yuri didn’t look at him, staring up instead. At the clouds steadily moving through the sky. “Why were you running away?”

In a book, Ashe might have been more clever, might have said something to make Yuri laugh. In the future, he’d think, _I wish I had. I wish he’d liked me better--enough to stay._

But he didn’t.

His eyes filled up with tears, but he did not make a sound as they fell. “I don’t belong here,” he wheezed. “I’m just a burden. I should go away, and then my brother and sister, they’ll be safe, because maybe if it’s only two extra mouths to feed, it’ll be easier--”

“Who made you feel that way?” Yuri asked, interrupting him.

Ashe looked at Yuri through his endless tears, at his profile, long purple hair, his gaze trained far into the distance. He was so _pretty_ , just like the flowers surrounding them.

But his eyes were cold and hard.

“No one,” Ashe admitted, feeling foolish now that he had to say it out loud. He curled his legs to his chest, making a ball of himself, hiding his face against his knees. “I just thought…”

“Hey, no shame in that, little guy,” Yuri assured, nudging his shoulder with his own. “You just got in your own head about it. I think if your father couldn’t afford you, he wouldn’t have adopted you, silly.”

When Ashe lifted his head, Yuri was smiling at him. He gestured suddenly back up towards the castle, and when Ashe looked, he could make out Christophe, shouting his name through the snowy air. He spotted Lonato digging through the garden in desperation.

He stumbled to his feet, rabbit heart racing, caught between running away and running to them. Yuri looked up at him, smiling that smile again. “Go on,” he said. “We’ll meet again.”

So Ashe nodded and ran to Lonato, calling, “I’m here! I’m still here!”

When Lonato scooped him up into his arms, Ashe looked over his shoulder and saw Yuri still there, looking up at the sky. Then slowly, he laid back and disappeared amongst the flowers.

* * *

Two months later, Ashe was introduced to Yuri by his adoptive father, Count Rowe, alongside his beautiful mother who insisted Lonato’s children were all simply adorable. She was sweet, kneeling before him and Angela and Alistair and saying, “Oh you are all so darling! Such lovely children, don’t you agree, Count Rowe?”

Count Rowe, hands clasped behind his back, spine straight as a blade, didn’t even look at them. “No Crests, huh?” he asked, when he thought only Lonato could hear.

Yuri--Ashe could tell--had a Crest. He could see it in his eyes. It didn’t glow so blindingly as he’d always imagined it would. It was a dull kind of shimmer. Something alive. Across the dinner table, Yuri met Ashe’s curious gaze, and Ashe saw it there. Breathing.

But he was too distracted by Yuri’s thin smile to parse out the meaning of it.

“Well, well,” Yuri said that night, walking haphazardly atop the garden wall, watching Ashe help Christophe wrangle his siblings back inside for bed. “I’m happy to see you stayed, little guy!”

The moon was high overhead, turning Yuri ghostly against the dark, starry sky. Christophe called, exasperated, “Yuri, that’s very dangerous!”

He sounded so tired, and when Yuri slowly, slyly, lifted one foot and teetered back and forth, his voice turned high and whiny like a child. “And what would your mother say about those manners!”

“It’s okay,” Ashe insisted, though he wasn’t sure why he stepped in. He lifted a sleepy Alistair up for Chris to take and smiled at him. “I’ll get him down.”

Chris didn’t look so sure, but then Angela whined and said, “I’m tired!” and he had no time to argue.

He sighed and kissed Ashe’s forehead. “Be safe, darling boy.”

When Chris was gone, Yuri took a seat on the wall, smirking down at Ashe. “Your brother’s pretty and all but what a stick in the mud.”

Ashe huffed at him, hands on his hips. Chris wasn’t a stick in the mud, he was just worried--he wanted to say that, but he didn’t get a chance to, because Yuri began to laugh. “Aw!” he laughed, tossing his head back and letting the sound out into the cool night air. “You look so cute when you’re mad!”

That only made Ashe huff more, his face turning hot with embarrassment. Yuri had mercy on him after a moment, falling from the wall with the grace of a cat, marching up to Ashe with that thin smile on his face. “Don’t worry,” he assured, tossing an arm around Ashe’s shoulders. “I’m not here to gawk at your brother.” For a moment--a brief moment--his smile was so gentle that it seemed like a mistake. As if he’d never meant for Ashe to see it.

And then it was gone.

“I came to see _you_ , silly!” he laughed, tugging Ashe closer to his side.

Yuri pulled Ashe through the garden, past statues that poured water and lovely, overgrown flower beds. He stopped at a marble gazebo, so tall that Ashe felt dwarfed at its entrance, watching Yuri spin in circles within. “Why me?” he asked, shy, unsure if he was even allowed to.

Yuri stopped and looked at him, eyes wide as if he hadn’t expected him to. “Oh,” he said, a thoughtful expression on his face. He furrowed his brow, twisted his lips. And then he shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re nice to me, I guess.”

Just like the first time they met, Ashe found it easy to lose track of time talking to Yuri. His presence was a spell of its own. It left Ashe powerless, mesmerized. He found himself at such a loss for what to say, letting out whatever came to mind.

“Your mother is very kind,” he tried, leaning over the railing of the gazebo to look up at the sky, at the stars.

Yuri, leaned back against a pillar and cast in shadow, smiled. The glow in his eyes was all the more noticeable in the dark. “Too nice,” he said, though his voice sounded fond. “Bad taste in men, but she’s got an eye for cute kids.”

He ruffled Ashe’s already messy hair with one hand, his long, slender fingers tangling just slightly in his curls.

It went on like that all night, Ashe asking about Yuri, and Yuri easily, casually, even candidly deflecting it back on Ashe. By the time Christophe returned to collect them, Ashe feared he hadn’t gotten to know Yuri any better than before.

They’d spoken for hours, and he’d learned nothing.

As Chris guided them back inside, Ashe leaned around him to watch Yuri’s lifted chin, so confident. Yuri turned to walk up the stairs to the guest room, and Ashe watched him go, remembering the last thing they’d said to each other.

_The violets died, huh?_

_Yes… but it’s okay! Lonato says flowers like that always grow back. They’ll be here again next winter._

_Yeah? Well, maybe I will be too._

Yuri disappeared around the corner. Even though Ashe strained to catch one last glimpse of him, Chris’s hand hovering at his back guided him ever further ahead. Try as he may, Yuri was gone.

* * *

Ashe only visited Rowe once. As the months passed, it was always Yuri and his family visiting Gaspard. Lonato simply loved company!

And that was all fine by Ashe. Chris had taught them all how to fish together, and Yuri had helped Ashe pick flowers for a bouquet that they presented to Yuri’s mom together. They’d gotten lost in the woods, and hidden away under the bed covers to tell each other stories. Every nook and corner of Castle Gaspard, Ashe had discovered with Yuri at his side, and he couldn’t imagine it any other way.

But throughout the journey to Rowe, Ashe practically vibrated with excitement. Yuri so rarely spoke about his home--spoke so little about himself in general. “It’s just because he’s older,” Chris laughed when Ashe worriedly asked him why, convinced Yuri must secretly hate him. “I’m sure he thinks it makes him seem very mature.”

And maybe he was right. Ashe had never been under any pretense that Yuri was the same as him. He’d always seemed so much older, wiser. World weary, like a tired knight from a book.

Well, try as he might, Yuri couldn’t hide everything when he was home. What would Ashe learn about his mysterious friend? Where would they play, what would they talk about? How long this time would he be trapped under his spell?

But they barely spoke at all.

Christophe, Lonato, and Count Rowe all went horseback riding early in the morning; and Yuri’s mother took on the task of watching over Angela and Alistair; and Ashe sat in the library. Waiting.

“Yuri hasn’t been feeling so well,” his mother explained, a sad look in her eyes. “But he asked me to ensure you meet him here.”

So for hours, Ashe sat surrounded by the books, like the walls of a dungeon, the windows barred by grime from disuse.

“Hey, little guy,” Yuri called at some point, when Ashe drifted on the edge of sleep.

The sound of his voice drew Ashe from his dream so quickly. He sat up straight, eyes wide, staring at Yuri before him. Smiling down with his thin smile. He looked so, so _tired_.

Ashe sat up and opened his mouth to say so, but Yuri seemed to know what he wanted to say and walked away before he could. “Sorry I left you waiting so long,” he sighed dramatically. “How about I show you my favorite book to make up for it?”

Ashe rolled off the armchair to follow close behind as Yuri led him to a bookshelf filled with large tomes far too big for Ashe to carry. He almost protested, determined to ask Yuri why he looked so tired, determined not to let him deflect this time as he always did--but instead he gasped.

As Yuri reached forward, his sleeve fell to reveal dark bruises along his wrist.

Ashe had become more than accustomed to caretaking. The moment he saw the bruises, he wanted to fix them. He hurried to Yuri, took his injured wrist delicately in hand. “What--”

“Don’t.” Yuri snapped. “Don’t ask.”

So often, Yuri joked about stuff like this. Describing the time he broke his arm falling from a balcony, just to see Ashe gag as he described his own bone sticking out from the skin; or when Christophe cut his forehead and bled everywhere, he said, _Maybe the boring half of his brain will fall out._

But now there was no joking. No teasing smile. His eyes fluttered shut. He was the violet Ashe met so long ago.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Yuri said, so soft. “I… I did it to myself. Please, pretend it’s not there, Ashe. For me.”

He took the book and brought Ashe back to the armchair, leaning against the arm and gathering Ashe up in his lap. As if Ashe hadn’t seen a thing, Yuri flipped open the book, read to him from the first lines. But Ashe just stared at the inside of his wrist, at the bruises that looked like fingerprints more than anything Yuri could have done to himself. Ashe could tell a lie when he heard one. He'd told so many himself.

“Ashe,” Yuri sighed at length, shutting the book and setting it aside. “Can I tell you a story?”

“Of course,” Ashe said, eager to hear anything but hollow recitations fall from Yuri’s lips.

“It’s not a happy one,” Yuri admitted.

But Ashe could tell he needed to tell it. “It’s okay.”

So Yuri pulled Ashe close and combed his hair from his face with one hand over and over and over. “A long, long time ago, a beautiful woman was cursed to live a life of endless hardship.” He rested his chin atop Ashe’s head, wrapping his arms around his waist and drumming fingertips against his side. Ashe snuggled close and listened to his heart beating against his ear. “The woman sold everything she owned, just to survive. And when that ran out, she sold pieces of herself, until she had shriveled to the bone. She’d lost everything--but she never lost hope.”

Yuri’s voice became thicker and thicker as he spoke. Ashe knew that sound--had heard it so many times in his own voice. But like the bruises, Ashe could tell Yuri didn’t want him to mention it.

“Then one day,” he continued, his voice high and thin and breathless. “She gave birth to a baby boy who was made of gold.” He squeezed Ashe tight. “ _Salvation_. Her golden boy. He could save her, sell himself to the highest bidder and rescue her from the slums she called hell.”

Yuri made a choked sound, burying his face in Ashe’s hair, and Ashe--so small--could only lift his head to nuzzle against him in return. “But it’s worse here, Ashe. I’m so tired.”

Ashe leaned back to look at him, to meet his watery eyes. He felt he might cry too, but didn’t. Couldn’t. Yuri needed him more. “Then rest,” he insisted.

Yuri stared at him for a long moment, and then he laughed. Just a short little thing. He covered his mouth to hide it before it became anything more. “Aw, Ashe,” he breathed, shaking his head and closing his eyes. “There’s nowhere for me to sleep.”

“Sleep here,” Ashe said, wrapping his arms around Yuri’s neck to pull him into a hug. He let Yuri rest his cheek against his shoulder, stroking his hair the way he did when Alie or Angie had a nightmare. Ashe was not warm or soft--he was too small. Too skinny and frail. But he had been a resting place for many sleepy heads. He knew what they needed.

Christophe had told him once, _Kindness is a kind of magic. The kind that saves people._

Save. He wanted to save Yuri so desperately in that moment. He wanted to be his salvation.

For a very long time, they merely sat there together, Yuri resting on Ashe. Once, on the edge of sleep, Ashe heard Yuri whisper, “Can I stay here forever?”

But he could not.

A week later, Ashe left, and he looked out of the carriage to the window of Yuri’s bedroom, where he stood with the curtains lifted. Ashe swore their eyes met. If only for a moment. Breathing.

The curtain closed, obscuring Yuri from view.

* * *

When Ashe saw Yuri for the last time, it was nearly winter again. The first snows had fallen, blanketing the fields in fresh white. “Pretty soon,” Ashe said, trudging through the slush, "The lake will freeze over, and Chris says he'll teach us how to ice skate!"

Yuri stood on a hill, overlooking said lake, arms crossed over his chest. Since they'd first met, Ashe had come to see so many sides of him. His sharp tongue, his thin smile. He'd learned about the bruises he hid under long sleeves, and the little snort in his laugh when it was genuine, and how he tended to get himself into trouble but never someone he loved.

But through it all, the first thing Ashe had known about him had never changed--Yuri was beautiful.

Ashe stopped at the foot of the hill, looking up at him, outlined by the pale, pale blue sky. Like a prince on the cover of a novel, the title faded by the hands of time and countless lovers.

"Will you skate with us?" Ashe asked, suddenly afraid to take those last steps and stand at his side. He didn't belong there.

Yuri lifted his chin and breathed out a huff of foggy gray air. "I'm no good at it."

Ashe wanted to protest, wanted to say, _You don't have to be. I don't care about that._

But Yuri smiled at him, sad, eyes scrunched from the cold or maybe just affection. "What's wrong, little guy?" he asked.

Ashe just shook his head, looking down into the snow. The violets still lay underneath. Waiting to bloom. He wished they were back already. "Nothing."

Yuri had always been the kind to push for more, to tease until Ashe broke and admitted--and then he would comfort, soothe, with hands combing Ashe's hair and an arm around his shoulder.

But now he only looked away. He seemed so lost in thought. Ashe didn't want to interrupt.

Though Yuri pushed, Ashe didn't. He wanted to believe that Yuri would tell him if something was wrong. All these months and he still knew so little about him.

They stood together that last day, separated by a yard of snow, staring at the yet unfrozen lake. Ashe, still oblivious.

It was only the next morning that he realized anything was wrong. He woke to find it snowing hard outside, so hard he could barely see anything through it. A blanket of white suffocated the castle and anything still inside.

He saw, like a ghost, the vague form of a carriage far below, and deep within, he had that feeling again. _I will know you for a long, long time._

Before he could make sense of what he was doing, he'd leapt from his bed and broken into a run. He barely managed to swing on a coat and a scarf, repeating in his head as he ran, _I'll know, I'll know, I'll know._

He passed Christophe in the hall, who saw he was barefoot and still in his pajamas and shouted, "Where the stars are you going!"

But he wasn't fast enough to catch him. Ashe raced through the entrance hall, his head screaming, _I'll know! I'll know! I'll always know!_

He made it through the front doors, his feet stinging in the cold, going numb as he ran towards the shape of the carriage--towards the shape of Yuri, walking away.

Ashe ran only harder, even as Christophe called after him, even as the biting wind chewed at his cheeks, even though his scarf was yet unwrapped. Chasing after Yuri’s shape in the distance, following Count Rowe to their waiting carriage. “Yuri!” he cried. “Yuri, wait!”

He couldn’t let it go this way. He knew something was wrong. Something in the sad way Yuri smiled. If Christophe and Lonato had taught him anything, it was that kindness saved people. He wanted to save him.

He stumbled in the snow, nearly falling to his knees, if not for the slender hand that caught his arm and pulled him up. Ashe looked up at Yuri with wide eyes, at his red nose and sad, sad gaze. Tired, as if he’d expected this.

But even so he smiled. Ashe smiled back as Yuri lifted his hands to the ends of Ashe’s scarf and wrapped it in a bow at his throat, the way only he knew how to do. His hands ever firm and clever. “What're you doing, running around in the snow, silly?” he scolded, though there was no anger in his words.

"You didn't say goodbye," was the only excuse Ashe could come up with.

“Yuri,” Count Rowe called, standing tall in the falling snow, an intimidating figure ahead of them. “We are leaving. _Now_.”

Yuri didn’t even turn to him, focused on pulling Ashe’s hood up over his ears, tucking a strand of messy hair back from his face. Count Rowe turned away, and Yuri took Ashe’s hands in his. Yuri was only a few years older, and yet his hands already seemed so much stronger, so much surer than Ashe’s little fragile things. “I never say goodbye,” he said. His voice sounded thick. As if he were holding back from saying more. "You know that."

Ashe looked at their hands together, at his knuckles turning red from the cold and Yuri’s thumbs rubbing circles against them, a vain effort to keep them warm. He did know. _Goodbye is far too final_ , he'd explained once.

“You’re so sad,” Ashe said, and Yuri’s hands froze still against his. He looked up again, his hood nearly falling off. “Yuri… If… if you’re sad… you can talk to me about it.” He made that face that always caused Yuri to laugh, determined and pouty. This was the truest thing he’d ever said. He’d told many lies before he and Yuri met. But no longer. “I will always be here for you.”

And just as he always did, Yuri began to laugh. Soft at first, ducking his head, and then louder, louder. Until he was throwing his head back and cackling so loud that even the snow couldn’t muffle it.

But tears spilled from his eyes, long rivulets down his cheeks. Ashe shook his head, stepping towards him and reaching as if to wipe the tears away--but Yuri swiped his hand aside. “You don’t understand anything, Ashe,” he chuckled, wiping up to rub his own tears from his face. “Not a damn thing…”

Yuri looked at Ashe through his watery eyes, his expression somehow fond. He shook his head and stepped towards Ashe, taking his cheek in hand. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “I like it better this way.” He sighed, closed his eyes. Then, as the snow fell softly around them, he took Ashe’s chin in hand and pressed his cold, chapped lips to his forehead.

For a long, quiet moment, they stood like that. The snow ever falling. Christophe still chasing, calling, “Ashe, come back here!”

Then Yuri pulled away, resting their foreheads together for a brief moment. “Until we meet again, friend,” Yuri whispered.

He turned and walked away, towards the carriage that Count Rowe had already boarded. The snow fell so hard that Ashe could no longer make out his figure.

He was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> YuriAshe stole my entire heart... I'm obsessed... I also obsessed over the timeline in this, so if anything like confuses you believe you me I KNOW XD I wrote this all before I even finished the DLC, I was so consumed with passion. I really hope you guys like it ^^;;;;;;
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading! If you enjoy, let me know with a kudos and/or a comment! Tell me what you think =D And if you want to scream about YuriAshe with me, please hit me up on twitter, @novelistangel23 Thank you again!
> 
> (Also, title is a play on a lyric from Blood Bank by Bon Iver. So gentle ; ^ ; )


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